How did you pick your child's middle name?

[bb2605]

I'm a little uncertain about how to choose a middle name for our baby due this summer.
I love the name Violet which happens to be the name of one of our grandmothers but I worry (and I'm aware this is likely not going to happen at all but hello pregnancy anxiety ) that family members may be secretly offended if we use a family name from the other side of the family and not their side (call me ridiculous please but my mum can be slightly weird when it comes to stuff like this!!)
We giving our baby 2 middle names but the two we like don't really go together at all - they sound weird in either order.
Alternatively we could just go for a name we like that is not a family name but I think it's quite nice for a middle name to have some meaning to it.
Thoughts? Suggestions? How did you choose a middle name for your children? Is it odd to give 2 middle names?

DS1 - DH's name (also his DF's name but that wasn't a trend we'd be continuing!)

DS2 - DH's middle name. My maiden name doesn't really work as a middle name, it would just sound like he had 2 surnames, and my DF's name sounded ridiculous with the first name we'd chosen.

Alice is such a beautiful classic name PLEASE don’t change the spelling to Alyse

My dd middle name is Avalon, which means King Arthur's resting place, this I because my husband's grandad was called Arthur and died two weeks before she was born. We wanted to honour him and apart from Arthuretta couldn't find a female equivalent for Arthur until we found that!!

Why bother if there isn’t a name that’s important to you, middle names don’t serve any purpose

@whatsyourflava it's not that I don't like the name itself spelled like that it's that I think it looks weird next to the other names we're thinking of. For instance once of the names we like is Effie and I think Effie Alice looks a bit strange whereas Effie Alys looks more pretty. But yeah it could just come across as pretentious and I know Alys is an actual Welsh name so it's actually a different name altogether.

@bb2605 ds middle names are Richard John so fairly traditional names which go with our surname.

@PrincessHoneysuckle yes boys names are a lot easier I find! We have two middle names picked out for a boy which are my grandfather's name/my dad's middle name and my DHs father's name - both very traditional like yours. They go together well too. Girls are another story!

My kids don't have a middle name...🙄

DH picked one uncontested (as long as it 'went' with the other names) and I picked one (with the same criteria). I guess we could have vetoed if it was a name we really hated. For DS middle name I picked the name of my grandfather, I guess DH could have also used the name of his grandfather but he decided to just go with his favourite boys name. He also used his favourite girls name for DD and I did the same as there weren't any family names I wanted to use. For us it was a chance to use some of the more slightly 'out there' or trendy names that we didn't have the courage to saddle our children with as first names.

Mine don’t have middle names - it’s not compulsory if you can’t think of one

All my 3 DC have 2 middle names. Only one of those names is after a grandparent on my side of the family. No one has ever said this isn't fair to DH's side etc. The other names we chose are names with nice meanings, 'wished for child' etc.

My daughters middle name is violet, just liked the way it sounded with her first and surnames. Don't overthink it, but I wouldn't do the two middle names.

I think youre over thinking it. We only gave one DC a middle name to honor one of my grandparents. Other DC doesnt even have a middle name because we couldnt find one that we actually wanted to honor that also went well with his first name.
Nobody is upset about it. At least not openly :)
Although MIL was the first to put DC 1 first name out there and we actually fell in love with it, so technically his family named one child and the other has a middle name from my family.

Ds has both my dad and fil name as his middle name (they have the same name)

We won't be doing the same if next DC is a girl as our dms names don't 'go' together very well.

My DD has a Polish middle name as her Grandma (her dad's mum) is Polish. It isn't a family name, we both just liked it but we wanted to honour her heritage (didn't use it as a first name due to people not being able to spell / pronounce it correctly).

DS1 has DH's dad's middle name
DS2 has my dad's middle name.
Simples.

DD has two middle names. One grandmother from either side. The names don’t really “go”, but literally the only times they are said together is when DD asks how to spell her full name .

My dcs middle names are all after deseaced relatives.
With dd her middle names sound more like a hyphenated name than 2 separate ones but it didnt matter.

As my girls have their father's surname aka my husband I insisted that their middle names be from my family so my eldest has the same middle name as all the 1st born females on my mother's side of the family (including my mother and me), my youngest has my grandmother's mother's name as her middle name.

Ds had his dads birth name (dh is adopted, we were originally going to use as first name but came across another name we loved) and my dads name which was also DH grandads name. They sound nice together and grown up

one was a sweep-stake on the family whatsapp

My oldest 2 dont have middle names, No one in their dads side of the family does, and as the agreement was I chose first and exh chose middle, that's what happened!

Ds2's middle name is after DH's favourite marvel character, and dd2's is DH's late mothers name (we had the same agreement)

Thanks so much for the input everyone. I think I feel better about having the two names and think we’ll likely go with one from each grandmother as although they don’t sound perfect together to my ear it will be really nice to honour them in that way, as we will if it’s a boy. Loved hearing all your stories and particularly laughed at the family WhatsApp sweepstake hahaha

I just absolutely loved the name. Still do, 21 and a bit years later.

No ties to it at all, no family connections to upset, just a great name.

I have kind of always wished I'd given it to her as her first name tbh. (I was not with her dad when she was born so it was my choice entirely, although we did get back together and subsequently married)

Her middle name is Jasmine.

We used DPs father's name, he was the most important person in his life. He sadly passed away when DS was only 4 months old.

My family didn't mind at all. He was the first boy in 3 generations of mostly single mothers so no one was expecting him to be named after them!